Oh, life. How do you manage to be both crazy and awesome simultaneously? I have spent the past several weeks as a ball of excitement and anxiety. Perhaps because I’ve grown too used to cushy freelance life, so when I actually have to do big, out-of-the-ordinary things, all I want is for a fainting couch to appear in my room and a mint julep to materialize in my hand. (And also for my room to be a completely different room. One with a view of something that isn’t a city street, and that doesn’t contain what appears to be the remnants of a bomb made of dishes, clothes, and cardboard boxes.) Or perhaps it’s because I said “yes” to a lot of things all at once. Yes to shoots in the days preceeding and following the workshop Eva and I hosted in upstate NY. Yes to cutting my avocado food/prop sourcing time down to one absolutely insane day so I could spend a couple days in the Adirondacks instead (worth it). Oh and my birthday happened somewhere amidst all of that? Interesting.

Our weather is currently wavering between summer and fall here in the northeast. I woke up this morning to cold, crisp air on my face from the open window beside my bed. I also woke up thinking about pie crust. (Not weird.) As I lay in bed delaying my morning run, my thoughts drifted to the braided pie crust I made for a Slow Food get-together back in February. (Braided pie crusts and I are not friends, btw. Braiding pie dough is a complete pain in the a$$. [Does that even need to be said? I’m pretty sure everyone could figure that out.] Parts of this one also kinda shrank and sank down into the pie. [My fault, but still, ARG.] And you wind up with an edge that’s super thick and hard to cut through. At least I did. Thank goodness Eva’s salted rose and honey filling was beyond delicious enough to overshadow the sub-par crust.) ANYWAY, I buried my memories of braided pie crust and instead started thinking about another dessert I had that night: pouding chômeur.

This cake has made an appearance here before, many moons ago. With an overturned bowl as a stand. And an awkward screened-in porch thing going on in the background. So let’s just forget about that post and focus on this new one, because I’ve made some improvements (to both the recipe and my prop/photo situation). It deserves another moment in the spotlight, because it’s stupid easy to make and de-freakin-licious.

Hey guys! I hope everyone that celebrated Christmas this week had a fantastic one. This was the first year that I did not spend Christmas eve and day at my parents’ home. (I had to push the trip back to this weekend due to some scheduling issues.) It was a little strange, but we managed to have a fine little holiday here, complete with beef Wellington and hot buttered rum. And that time not spent traveling meant I could do a little New Year’s Eve planning on Thursday!

Whoopsie, I disappeared for a little bit there! It seems that a weekend of baking and peddling treats makes me not want to think about food for a good stretch of time. But now that I’m back, I’d like to talk to you about something I started experimenting with a couple months ago. Something that kind of revolutionized my approach to creating simple syrup infusions.

It all started back in July, when I began making this shrub. I’d combined the fruit and sugar, let it sit, then macerated and covered it, as per ushe. As I walked by the plastic wrap–covered bowl a couple hours later, I looked at it and thought, “huh, it looks like a lot of that sugar has dissolved into syrup already.”